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Almost every December on the third Sunday of Advent, I take out this special cake plate and make my family’s favorite chocolate pound cake. It’s time for Rose Sunday Tea (find the recipe here). Friends gather to sip tea laced with brandy, eat cake, and catch up with one another’s lives . . . and for a few hours, all the Christmas craziness melts away, leaving us de-stressed and ready to face life again.

Like most working moms, I find it tough to fit in everything I need to do to get ready for Christmas, and even this year I had to postpone this ritual a few weeks when a snowstorm extended a business trip unexpectedly. But the Downton Abbey premiere presents the perfect opportunity for a “do-over,” and my former Ascension colleagues have assured me that they are on their way. So today, I am baking.

As much as I love my husband (and children) — and I do — I’ve learned that I have more to offer them when I don’t lean on him too heavily. It simply isn’t fair to expect one person in your life to meet your every need. That’s what girlfriends are for. They have experienced the same milestones and many of the same challenges, and can usually add some much-needed perspective, as well as a few laughs.

Of course, having moved so many times over the years, many of the women I’ve come to love and admire most don’t live close enough to come for tea, so necessity becomes the mother of invention. I drive a few extra hours on business trips, send comfort boxes, and wine-and-Skype when I really need a fix.

“Blogger Mom” Sherry Antonetti, suffered a miscarriage this week. This energetic mother of ten is walking a “valley of shadow” that is unknown to me. A car accident when I was eighteen caused such extensive internal damage, my doctor informed me I would not be able to have children. (The only silver lining to this was that my then-boyfriend, an Argentinian jackass, dumped me the minute I came out of I.C.U. because “You’re not a real woman anymore.”)

In a way, the knowledge that pregnancy was not in the cards for me made it a bit easier when I got married. As much as I would have liked to have a child, knowing it was not possible gave me the freedom to check that particular dream off my “wish list” and find a new dream with my husband, which we could envision together.

And yet, I’ve come to realize that the pain of the not-quite-realized dream has a special place in the spiritual life. Those of us who never buy a lottery ticket, do not experience the let-down of those who splurge on $20 in tickets without a single hit. That tantalizing possibility causes us to hope in God’s goodness . . . the excruciating aftermath leads us to trust in his mercy.

As we enter the season of Advent, we recall the most extraordinary of all of divine interventions: the Incarnation, the moment in history when God definitively intervened in human history, to remake a future infinitely better than we’d imagined for ourselves. “O felix culpa …” O happy fault, that won for us so great a Savior.

This year, as we enter the Church’s new year, let’s take a moment to reflect upon those moments when we experienced a tiny point of light, a brief moment when possibility turned into disappointment. The angst of childish choices. The agony of free will turned on end. The inexplicable shadow of nature at its worst.

Last Sunday was our annual Advent Tea, and at my table was a woman who had adopted two children. She had heard me speak on Al Kresta’s program about the Extraordinary Moms Network, and said she’d hoped I was still helping adoptive parents. It seems she was looking for a little support involving some changes her daughters were going through right now.

To be honest, I’ve become a bit gun-shy, and haven’t been writing as extensively about the subject of adoption for a while. For one thing, I recently resigned from the board of the foster/adoption agency because I didn’t agree with their recruiting practices, and was wondering God might be pointing me in another direction.

Over the years I’ve sometimes been denounced or outright attacked by others in adoption circles who disagreed with my position on reunification. (I believe that the adoptive bond should remain protected even in adulthood between parent and child, and that biological parents should be able to prevent the release of identifying information if they do not wish to be contacted by their grown children. I have no objection, however, to releasing this information if the biological parents ARE willing to be contacted, and agree that adoptees of all ages should have mediated access to medical information.)

Judging from comments I’ve received on this, and from the prevalence of open adoption, mine is not the popular opinion. I can live with that. What grew tiresome was the necessity of arguing endlessly with highly vocal and often disrespectful individuals who believe passionately that adopted children have the RIGHT to know their birth families. Always. Without exception. Even in cases of rape and incest, as this “Faith and Family” story shows.

And so, for a time I backed off on writing on the subject of adoption, to collect my thoughts a bit more systematically on the subject. To that end, my Master’s thesis is going to be about adoption as a metaphor for conversion — how the fact that the Scriptures speak of God adopting us as His children (Romans 8:14-15), giving us an inheritance we cannot lose (Galatians 4:4-6). The relationship is a permanent one. Here … read it yourself.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption. As proof that you are children, 4 God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Just as biological families reflects in a unique way the life-giving love of the Trinity, so adoptive families uniquely reflect the redemptive love of God. Working together, parents and children, we help one another to grow in the perfection God first created in us, the perfection that was distorted by the sinful influence of our first parents.

So today, Rose Sunday, I wanted to share with any adoptive parents out there who are feeling a bit overwhelmed (the extended family time associated with the holidays can bring out other issues in our children, can’t they?), a bit of encouragement. This is my Advent Blessing to you.

You are doing God’s work. Right now, right where you are. Whether that means drying a tear or baking a cookie, creating memories that will always be a part of your child’s story.

Being an adoptive parent doesn’t mean being a perfect parent. If that were true, none of us would be qualified to take any child into our homes.

Being an adoptive parent also doesn’t mean being a second-best parent. You have no reason to apologize for your decision to adopt. Not now, not ever. Your child may never thank you for the sacrifices you’ve made — and in the years to come, their drive to find their birth parents may make you wonder if you’d done everything you could to give them a secure sense of love and identity.

Don’t worry. You have done your very best, and your children have reaped the benefits. Your reward in heaven will be great, for Jesus says, “Whosoever welcomes a child in my name, welcomes me.”

Just as the Blessed Mother had to relinquish her precious Son when he became a man, so the time will come when we have to let go, too. Sooner or later, our children — all children — must make their way in the world, guided by the things we have taught them.

But for now, yours is the unmistakeable privilege of forming your child. Forming him not in your own image, but in the image of the Father who loves us all. One day, sometimes one minute, at a time.

May all the blessings of this holy season fall upon you and your home, today and every day.

It was the most remarkable Christmas miracle that transpired the other day in the Parent Room. Before my very eyes, a stand-off that had begun over an unfortunate misunderstanding, suddenly righted itself. Without preamble, a former political adversary suddenly and inexplicably proffered an olive branch. And I snapped it up before she could change her mind.

Now, I’d like to be able to say that this was an answer to prayer. But that wouldn’t be true, exactly. Typical Heidi fashion, once this individual ticked me off, I pretty much just carried on as if she didn’t exist. We both assumed the air of the injured party, and avoided one another. Four months later … she decided to let bygones be bygones.

It was a beautiful thing. Even though a small part of me kinda wished I’d thought of it first.

How often do we find ourselves hardened in opposition over an issue in the clear light of day is more complex than we allow ourselves to consider? In our rigidity, do we miss whispers of grace that are all around us, calling us to embrace a life of healing and reconciliation?

Imagine, if you will, what would have happened if Elizabeth had caught wind of her unwed teenage cousin’s pregnancy and barred her from her home, in moral outrage? “How dare she show up here, and ruin my joy! How selfish can she be!?”

Instead, the mature Elizabeth listened to those whispers of grace, and allowed her heart to fill not with judgment or contempt, but with love. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…”

So often in life, we are given the same choice: To respond with anger and judgment, or to extend ourselves in love. To the thoughtless teenager. The arrogant in-law. The nagging, the ignorant, and the selfish. The hurtful, the prickly, and the private. The wounded and the weak.

This holy season, as we make room in our hearts to welcome the Christ Child . . . can we find a place for his brothers and sisters as well?

As we enter the third week of Advent, the somber purple of the penitential season turns rosy. In years past, I’ve hosted a tea for a small group of girlfriends, so we can catch up on each other’s lives. Sadly, I had to let this go this year — at times even the best traditions need to take a back seat to more immediate concerns.

This week at school, several families are struggling with serious illness. One parent died unexpectedly, another parent — a good friend — is fighting for her life. As a community, we’re taking up collections and doing what we can for the families … but there’s something vaguely unsettling about it all. It makes you take stock, re-evaluate. Consider what things are of eternal consequence. Happy Advent!

This week I’ve also been in a couple of exchanges about a topic that resurfaces from time to time (primarily because my own POV on birth records doesn’t overlap neatly with views expressed on many other adoption sites). For me, the subject of birth records is not one in which I have any real personal investment; my own children know their birth parents already. However, I DO understand why others are so passionate about the subject: The names on the original birth certificate represent a missing link to the past, without which they cannot imagine a “happily ever after.”

And so, when the trail runs cold, it hurts the one member of the adoptive triad that least deserves to suffer. It forces the child to bear the painful consequences of his parents’ actions, addictions, or flaws. With adoption, the child loses his first parents, who tapped into the gift of procreation without the ability to parent a child together. And whenever this happens, the child suffers far more than the parents. Sometimes that child is raised without a parent. Sometimes he suffers abuse or neglect. Many, many times he pays with his life through abortion or child abuse. And sometimes … he is loses his original parents through adoption. No matter what form it takes, the pain is real … and it has far-reaching effects that can be measured not just in years, but in generations.

I’ve said it many times: Adoption is never God’s first choice. And yet, adoption does reflect the kind of divine love God showed to us when he brought us through adoption into his family, through the atoning death of Christ. And in that sense, families that are formed through adoption get to experience in a unique way the redemptive love of God.

Friday’s first reading offers a reassuring message for those who are struggling with their sense of self, whose identity — personal, spiritual, familial, cultural, or in any other sense — has not yet fully formed.

“If you would hearken to my commandments,
your prosperity would be like a river,
and your vindication like the waves of the sea;
Your descendants would be like the sand,
and those born of your stock like its grains,
Their name never cut off
or blotted out from my presence.”

That name we seek … that primal connection … is not one that we can ever hope to find in this life. We were created, first and foremost, to be called children of God.

Thanks to “Mighty Mom” for reprising this heartfelt post here at EMN. In this season of Advent, may we always be mindful of those for whom the “holidays” are a painful reminder of what they need … first and foremost, the preservation of dignity.

OK, when I was a child we lived in what I now know was poverty. However, because my then step-father was going to SMU to seminary (he never finished) we lived for a year and a half in the richest part of Dallas. It was very hard to be “the poor kid.”

Well, during the second of those Decembers we got an envelope in the mail that said “To the parents of Sarah …..” return address was Santa Claus. Inside were $100 in gift certificates to the local grocery store. Our Christmas was not big, but we did have one. Because of the former step-father’s poor spending habits, we would have had Christmas regardless…but then wouldn’t have had money for food. Those gift certificates were perfect. A month’s worth of food (give or take) that can’t be spent on anything else. (This was long before you could get groceries and “stuff” like clothes and toys at the same store.)

I have a younger brother with a different last name. Why was it addressed to my parents? Who sent it? How did they know that just sending money wouldn’t be as helpful as the gift certificates? Did they know? How can you accept a gift when you don’t know who to tell thank you?

These questions have no answers.

But I do know this. I was 12 years old and very depressed. Ready to lose hope in everything. My Mom was in the process of kicking out the former step-father with poor spending habits. The world as I knew it was falling apart. Out of nowhere Santa sent me a gift. Not just a gift of money for food for the family, but a gift to me of hope, an example that people aren’t all hateful and snide, and the assurance that I could and would make it and be able to move on to a better life. Also, the knowledge that there’d be help along the way through the Grace of God.

Christmas is about the Birth of Christ. However, Santa Claus is about spreading hope and joy to those most in need. And every December I celebrate BOTH. Yes, I DO believe in Santa Claus and I DO believe that he still lives.

He lives in our hearts every December when we make a point of spreading hope and joy to someone else.

“And I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight
Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.”